Vocabulary is the key component of listening narrative comprehension, but its contribution has be... more Vocabulary is the key component of listening narrative comprehension, but its contribution has been scarcely investigated in bilingual children. This study aimed to examine (a) listening narrative comprehension and receptive vocabulary in L1 (Italian) and L2 (English) in preschool and first grade children; (b) the specific contribution of receptive vocabulary to listening narrative comprehension in both languages. Participants were 30 preschoolers and 32 first graders, who are all Italian children attending an international school in English. In both languages, receptive vocabulary was assessed through PPVT-R and listening narrative comprehension through TOR 3-8. The results showed that listening narrative comprehension was age appropriate in both languages but higher in L1. Lower vocabulary in L1 than L2 was found, and this difference is higher for preschoolers than for first grades; finally, two regressions performed on listening narrative comprehension in each language showed tha...
Executive functions and social cognition (i.e., the mental operations that underlie social intera... more Executive functions and social cognition (i.e., the mental operations that underlie social interaction) are essential for children’s successful interactions, yet their role in peer social competence among children with and without a migration background is still underexplored. This study investigated the influence of inhibitory control and two domains of social cognition (theory of mind and facial emotion recognition) on children’s peer social competence exploring moderation by children’s migration background. First graders in Italy (n = 321, M age = 6.4 years, 45% girls, and 39% with a migration background) completed standardized tests, while teachers rated students’ peer social competence. The results indicated that immigrant-origin children were perceived as being less socially competent than their non-immigrant counterparts. Among children with a migration background, better inhibitory control and facial emotion recognition skills were linked to increased peer social competence....
25th Annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, 2018
Vocabulary is a key component of text comprehension and represents the weakest language dimension... more Vocabulary is a key component of text comprehension and represents the weakest language dimension for bilingual children (Geva & Farnia, 2011). The relation between vocabulary and listening comprehension has been analyzed in monolingual but not in bilingual pre-readers. This study aimed at examining: a) bilinguals\u2019 listening comprehension and receptive vocabulary in L1 (Italian) and L2 (English); b) the contribution of vocabulary in L1 and L2 to listening comprehension in each language. Participants were 62 Italian-English sequential bilinguals, divided in two groups: \u201cyounger\u201d (N=30;mean age 5;5) and \u201colder\u201d (N=32;mean age 6;6). Children vocabulary and listening comprehension were assessed using PPVT-R and Tor 3-8 (Levorato & Roch, 2007) in both languages. Aim a) Results of two ANOVAs (Languages/Groups) on listening comprehension and vocabulary showed that: Listening comprehension was appropriate for age in both languages but higher in L1 with no difference between groups; higher performance in L1 than L2 vocabulary with younger children showing a low vocabulary in L2 than older ones. Aim b) Two regressions performed on listening comprehension in each language showed that only vocabulary in the same language accounted for listening comprehension. Sequential bilinguals obtain higher performance in L1, however after few years of L2\u2019s exposure, language skills fall within the normal range, with some weakness in vocabulary. Moreover the contribution of vocabulary to listening comprehension is similar in both languages and specific for each. These results contribute to clarify how core oral language skills may promote higher-level comprehension processes in children acquiring more than one language (Babayigit, 2012)
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
During the COVID-19 pandemic, continuous closing and reopening of schools may have had an impact ... more During the COVID-19 pandemic, continuous closing and reopening of schools may have had an impact on teachers’ perception of the risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2 and of the effectiveness of health measures introduced to limit the spread of the virus, with consequences on teaching methods and relational bonds within schools. By means of an online survey, we measured: teachers’ stress, job-satisfaction, self-efficacy and emotions at work, risk-perception of contracting SARS-CoV-2, perception of effectiveness of health measures, teaching methods and social relationships. Participants were 2446 teachers (2142 women and 304 men) all engaged in the four educational stages. Most of the respondents were aged 50 or older (45%), followed by a group aged 41–50 (31%) and by a group aged <40 (24%). We used path analysis to test the impact that COVID-19 had, according to teachers, on teaching methods (Model 1) and social relationships (Model 2). In both models, teachers’ stress was positively dir...
The studies reported in this thesis, are inserted in the research line aimed to investigate the i... more The studies reported in this thesis, are inserted in the research line aimed to investigate the influence that some environmental factors - Socioeconomic Status, Bilingual exposure, and literacy environment - have on cognitive and linguistic development in pre-school age. The rationale of these studies is that, although the role of environmental factors on children development as well as the long-term effects of early interventions are well established, still, there is a conspicuous percentage of children that begin their formal schooling process unprepared to handle the demands of the school learning processes. The first Chapter provides an overview of theoretical background and previous literature concerning the effects that several environmental factors have on the cognitive and linguistic development of preschoolers. In Chapter 2, results of a study aimed to investigate the specific and unique effect of SES and Bilingual exposure on a large set of cognitive and linguistic abilit...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
According to the concept of “embodied cognition”, motor development should not be considered dist... more According to the concept of “embodied cognition”, motor development should not be considered distant from cognitive and language processes. Motor development is essential in the first 1000 days of life, as the child explores and learns new information from the environment. Among motor activities, baby swimming allows infants to make movements that they are not able to perform on solid ground. Since movements become slower in water, the sensory perception of these movements is amplified. However, the relationship between early swimming experience and motor development has not yet been investigated. Therefore, we carried out a pilot study with the aim of exploring this relationship for the first time. To that end, 32 infants aged from 6 to 10 months were recruited. The Peabody Developmental Motor Scale-2 was used to assess motor abilities in healthy children who regularly carried out aquatic courses compared to children who never attended swimming practice. Independent-sample t-tests ...
Many children are at risk for reading difficulties because of inadequate emergent literacy skills... more Many children are at risk for reading difficulties because of inadequate emergent literacy skills. It is widely accepted that development of emergent literacy skills is strictly related to children’s early literacy experiences at home and school. Dialogic reading is an evidence-based intervention to promote the language skills of preschool children. This study examined the feasibility and efficacy of a parent-focused dialogic book reading intervention that aimed to foster the early language and literacy skills of pre-school children. A sample of 40 Italian preschoolers (Mage = 62.9 months, SD = 6.3) and their parents were divided into three groups: treatment group (n = 12); information group (n = 12) and control group (n = 16). The efficacy of the intervention for oral language skills was examined by analyzing the improvements from pre- to post-intervention in children’s oral language outcomes, through ad hoc and standardized tasks; specifically, by measuring proximal and distal abi...
Introduzione: Numerose ricerche hanno indagato il ruolo di fattori individuali (et\ue0, working m... more Introduzione: Numerose ricerche hanno indagato il ruolo di fattori individuali (et\ue0, working memory) e fattori ambientali che possono influenzare l'acquisizione della L2 (Paradis, 2011). I fattori ambientali includono quantit\ue0 e qualit\ue0 di input linguistico, ambiente domestico di alfabetizzazione e uso della L2 nel contesto domestico (Unsworth, Hulk e Marinis, 2011). Quantit\ue0 e qualit\ue0 dell\u2019input linguistico ricevuto, la cui operazionalizzazione risulta tuttavia diversificata, influenzano lo sviluppo linguistico dei bambini. Tuttavia studi che esaminano gli effetti dell\u2019input linguistico in differenti domini linguistici all'interno dello stesso gruppo di bambini sono limitati e presentano risultati contraddittori. L'obiettivo di questo lavoro \ue8 indagare il ruolo della quantit\ue0 di esposizione linguistica in italiano (cumulativa e input linguistico attuale) e delle pratiche narrative in L2, in diversi ambiti di comprensione quali vocabolario,...
Introduzione. Il Simple View of Reading (SVR; Hoover & Gough, 1990) descrive la comprensione del ... more Introduzione. Il Simple View of Reading (SVR; Hoover & Gough, 1990) descrive la comprensione del testo scritto come il prodotto di decodifica e comprensione del testo orale. La validit\ue0 del modello \ue8 stata ampiamente testata, tuttavia, il numero di ricerche condotte con bambini/e che apprendono a leggere in lingue con ortografia superficiale \ue8 ridotto (si veda ad esempio Florit & Cain, 2011; Tobia & Bonifacci, 2015). Il presente studio ha analizzato il ruolo delle componenti del modello in bambini/e che apprendono a leggere in italiano, per contribuire al dibattito sui seguenti punti: a) la comprensione del testo orale esercita un peso maggiore rispetto alla decodifica valutata in termini sia di correttezza sia di velocit\ue0 fin dalle prime fasi di scolarizzazione?; b) il vocabolario contribuisce alla comprensione del testo scritto oltre il contributo delle componenti principali o attraverso di esse? Metodo. Hanno partecipato 149 bambini/e (et\ue0 media = 6;3; 50% femmine)...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
The most intensive period of language development is during the first years of life, during which... more The most intensive period of language development is during the first years of life, during which the brain is developing rapidly. Research has shown that children from disadvantaged households who received high-quality stimulation at a young age grew into adults who earned an average of 25% more than those who did not receive these interventions. In addition, it has been suggested that children who show a greater interest in literacy-related activities and voluntarily engage in them are likely to become better readers than children with less interest in literacy. These children’s factors, along with their engagement in literacy activities, are important components in children’s early literacy experiences and may affect their early language development. In this study, we examined associations among maternal education, home literacy environment (HLE), children’s interest and engagement in literacy activities, and language development of 44 toddlers aged between 20 and 36 months. Over...
The Simple View of Reading (SVR) model was investigated in Italian beginner readers to address th... more The Simple View of Reading (SVR) model was investigated in Italian beginner readers to address the following research questions: (a) does listening comprehension play a stronger role in reading comprehension than reading accuracy and fluency in the initial stages of literacy?; (b) what is the role of vocabulary within the SVR framework? First graders (N = 149; mean age = 6;3) were assessed at the beginning (T1; no formal instruction) and end (T2; after 6 months) of the school year. Vocabulary breadth and depth, and non-verbal reasoning were assessed at T1. Reading and listening comprehension, accuracy and fluency for non-words and words were assessed at T2. Structural equation models showed that (a) listening comprehension had a stronger relation with reading comprehension than reading accuracy and fluency at T2; (b) vocabulary breadth and depth at T1 accounted for reading comprehension through listening comprehension at T2. Findings supported the relevance of listening comprehensio...
Listening narrative comprehension, according to the theoretical framework of the multicomponent m... more Listening narrative comprehension, according to the theoretical framework of the multicomponent model for comprehension, involves numerous skills that interact dynamically between each other and have the potential to give rise to individual differences in comprehension. The purpose of the current work was to define a comprehensive and complete multicomponent model of listening narrative comprehension in preschool age. We investigated how variation in Length of Exposure to majority Language (i.e., how long children have been exposed to the Italian language), lower-order cognitive (WM, inhibitory control, attention shifting), language skills (receptive vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, rapid naming), and higher-order cognitive skills (inferences, TOM, knowledge of story-structure) are related to listening narrative comprehension in Italian of 111 preschool children (Mage = 61 months; SD = 6.8) growing in a monolingual or multilingual context. Structural equation modeling results showed...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Bilingual exposure (BE) and socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with children’s development... more Bilingual exposure (BE) and socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with children’s development, but their specific and unique effects are still unclear. This study analyzed the influence of these environmental factors on a set of cognitive and linguistic abilities in preschoolers to disentangle their effects. One hundred-eleven Italian-speaking preschool children (mean age = 61 months; SD = 6.8) growing in a monolingual or multilingual context completed an assessment of cognitive (theory of mind, inhibition, attention shifting and working memory) and linguistic abilities (vocabulary, grammar, narrative comprehension, lexical access). The results of hierarchical regressions with predictors variation in BE (both Length and Daily exposure) and SES on each ability, shown a specific contribution of variation in SES, after controlling for BE, in vocabulary, grammar, and working memory (WM), and a specific contribution of variation in BE, over and above effect of SES, in vocabulary, nar...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Socioeconomic disparities increase the probability that children will enter school behind their m... more Socioeconomic disparities increase the probability that children will enter school behind their more advantaged peers. Early intervention on language skills may enhance language and literacy outcomes, reduce the gap and, eventually, promote school readiness of low-SES (Socioeconomic Status) children. This study aimed to analyze the feasibility and effectiveness of a brief narrative-based intervention (treatment vs. control group) aimed to foster broad oral language skills in preschoolers (N = 69; Mean age = 5.5, SD = 4 months) coming from low-SES families. Moreover, it was analyzed whether children’s initial vocabulary mediates the intervention’s responsiveness. Results have shown that children in treatment group obtained greater gains than children in control group in almost all intervention-based measures. There is also some evidence for the generalizability of the intervention to other skills not directly trained during the intervention. Moreover, it was found that children’s ini...
Vocabulary is the key component of listening narrative comprehension, but its contribution has be... more Vocabulary is the key component of listening narrative comprehension, but its contribution has been scarcely investigated in bilingual children. This study aimed to examine (a) listening narrative comprehension and receptive vocabulary in L1 (Italian) and L2 (English) in preschool and first grade children; (b) the specific contribution of receptive vocabulary to listening narrative comprehension in both languages. Participants were 30 preschoolers and 32 first graders, who are all Italian children attending an international school in English. In both languages, receptive vocabulary was assessed through PPVT-R and listening narrative comprehension through TOR 3-8. The results showed that listening narrative comprehension was age appropriate in both languages but higher in L1. Lower vocabulary in L1 than L2 was found, and this difference is higher for preschoolers than for first grades; finally, two regressions performed on listening narrative comprehension in each language showed tha...
Executive functions and social cognition (i.e., the mental operations that underlie social intera... more Executive functions and social cognition (i.e., the mental operations that underlie social interaction) are essential for children’s successful interactions, yet their role in peer social competence among children with and without a migration background is still underexplored. This study investigated the influence of inhibitory control and two domains of social cognition (theory of mind and facial emotion recognition) on children’s peer social competence exploring moderation by children’s migration background. First graders in Italy (n = 321, M age = 6.4 years, 45% girls, and 39% with a migration background) completed standardized tests, while teachers rated students’ peer social competence. The results indicated that immigrant-origin children were perceived as being less socially competent than their non-immigrant counterparts. Among children with a migration background, better inhibitory control and facial emotion recognition skills were linked to increased peer social competence....
25th Annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, 2018
Vocabulary is a key component of text comprehension and represents the weakest language dimension... more Vocabulary is a key component of text comprehension and represents the weakest language dimension for bilingual children (Geva &amp; Farnia, 2011). The relation between vocabulary and listening comprehension has been analyzed in monolingual but not in bilingual pre-readers. This study aimed at examining: a) bilinguals\u2019 listening comprehension and receptive vocabulary in L1 (Italian) and L2 (English); b) the contribution of vocabulary in L1 and L2 to listening comprehension in each language. Participants were 62 Italian-English sequential bilinguals, divided in two groups: \u201cyounger\u201d (N=30;mean age 5;5) and \u201colder\u201d (N=32;mean age 6;6). Children vocabulary and listening comprehension were assessed using PPVT-R and Tor 3-8 (Levorato &amp; Roch, 2007) in both languages. Aim a) Results of two ANOVAs (Languages/Groups) on listening comprehension and vocabulary showed that: Listening comprehension was appropriate for age in both languages but higher in L1 with no difference between groups; higher performance in L1 than L2 vocabulary with younger children showing a low vocabulary in L2 than older ones. Aim b) Two regressions performed on listening comprehension in each language showed that only vocabulary in the same language accounted for listening comprehension. Sequential bilinguals obtain higher performance in L1, however after few years of L2\u2019s exposure, language skills fall within the normal range, with some weakness in vocabulary. Moreover the contribution of vocabulary to listening comprehension is similar in both languages and specific for each. These results contribute to clarify how core oral language skills may promote higher-level comprehension processes in children acquiring more than one language (Babayigit, 2012)
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
During the COVID-19 pandemic, continuous closing and reopening of schools may have had an impact ... more During the COVID-19 pandemic, continuous closing and reopening of schools may have had an impact on teachers’ perception of the risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2 and of the effectiveness of health measures introduced to limit the spread of the virus, with consequences on teaching methods and relational bonds within schools. By means of an online survey, we measured: teachers’ stress, job-satisfaction, self-efficacy and emotions at work, risk-perception of contracting SARS-CoV-2, perception of effectiveness of health measures, teaching methods and social relationships. Participants were 2446 teachers (2142 women and 304 men) all engaged in the four educational stages. Most of the respondents were aged 50 or older (45%), followed by a group aged 41–50 (31%) and by a group aged <40 (24%). We used path analysis to test the impact that COVID-19 had, according to teachers, on teaching methods (Model 1) and social relationships (Model 2). In both models, teachers’ stress was positively dir...
The studies reported in this thesis, are inserted in the research line aimed to investigate the i... more The studies reported in this thesis, are inserted in the research line aimed to investigate the influence that some environmental factors - Socioeconomic Status, Bilingual exposure, and literacy environment - have on cognitive and linguistic development in pre-school age. The rationale of these studies is that, although the role of environmental factors on children development as well as the long-term effects of early interventions are well established, still, there is a conspicuous percentage of children that begin their formal schooling process unprepared to handle the demands of the school learning processes. The first Chapter provides an overview of theoretical background and previous literature concerning the effects that several environmental factors have on the cognitive and linguistic development of preschoolers. In Chapter 2, results of a study aimed to investigate the specific and unique effect of SES and Bilingual exposure on a large set of cognitive and linguistic abilit...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
According to the concept of “embodied cognition”, motor development should not be considered dist... more According to the concept of “embodied cognition”, motor development should not be considered distant from cognitive and language processes. Motor development is essential in the first 1000 days of life, as the child explores and learns new information from the environment. Among motor activities, baby swimming allows infants to make movements that they are not able to perform on solid ground. Since movements become slower in water, the sensory perception of these movements is amplified. However, the relationship between early swimming experience and motor development has not yet been investigated. Therefore, we carried out a pilot study with the aim of exploring this relationship for the first time. To that end, 32 infants aged from 6 to 10 months were recruited. The Peabody Developmental Motor Scale-2 was used to assess motor abilities in healthy children who regularly carried out aquatic courses compared to children who never attended swimming practice. Independent-sample t-tests ...
Many children are at risk for reading difficulties because of inadequate emergent literacy skills... more Many children are at risk for reading difficulties because of inadequate emergent literacy skills. It is widely accepted that development of emergent literacy skills is strictly related to children’s early literacy experiences at home and school. Dialogic reading is an evidence-based intervention to promote the language skills of preschool children. This study examined the feasibility and efficacy of a parent-focused dialogic book reading intervention that aimed to foster the early language and literacy skills of pre-school children. A sample of 40 Italian preschoolers (Mage = 62.9 months, SD = 6.3) and their parents were divided into three groups: treatment group (n = 12); information group (n = 12) and control group (n = 16). The efficacy of the intervention for oral language skills was examined by analyzing the improvements from pre- to post-intervention in children’s oral language outcomes, through ad hoc and standardized tasks; specifically, by measuring proximal and distal abi...
Introduzione: Numerose ricerche hanno indagato il ruolo di fattori individuali (et\ue0, working m... more Introduzione: Numerose ricerche hanno indagato il ruolo di fattori individuali (et\ue0, working memory) e fattori ambientali che possono influenzare l'acquisizione della L2 (Paradis, 2011). I fattori ambientali includono quantit\ue0 e qualit\ue0 di input linguistico, ambiente domestico di alfabetizzazione e uso della L2 nel contesto domestico (Unsworth, Hulk e Marinis, 2011). Quantit\ue0 e qualit\ue0 dell\u2019input linguistico ricevuto, la cui operazionalizzazione risulta tuttavia diversificata, influenzano lo sviluppo linguistico dei bambini. Tuttavia studi che esaminano gli effetti dell\u2019input linguistico in differenti domini linguistici all'interno dello stesso gruppo di bambini sono limitati e presentano risultati contraddittori. L'obiettivo di questo lavoro \ue8 indagare il ruolo della quantit\ue0 di esposizione linguistica in italiano (cumulativa e input linguistico attuale) e delle pratiche narrative in L2, in diversi ambiti di comprensione quali vocabolario,...
Introduzione. Il Simple View of Reading (SVR; Hoover & Gough, 1990) descrive la comprensione del ... more Introduzione. Il Simple View of Reading (SVR; Hoover & Gough, 1990) descrive la comprensione del testo scritto come il prodotto di decodifica e comprensione del testo orale. La validit\ue0 del modello \ue8 stata ampiamente testata, tuttavia, il numero di ricerche condotte con bambini/e che apprendono a leggere in lingue con ortografia superficiale \ue8 ridotto (si veda ad esempio Florit & Cain, 2011; Tobia & Bonifacci, 2015). Il presente studio ha analizzato il ruolo delle componenti del modello in bambini/e che apprendono a leggere in italiano, per contribuire al dibattito sui seguenti punti: a) la comprensione del testo orale esercita un peso maggiore rispetto alla decodifica valutata in termini sia di correttezza sia di velocit\ue0 fin dalle prime fasi di scolarizzazione?; b) il vocabolario contribuisce alla comprensione del testo scritto oltre il contributo delle componenti principali o attraverso di esse? Metodo. Hanno partecipato 149 bambini/e (et\ue0 media = 6;3; 50% femmine)...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
The most intensive period of language development is during the first years of life, during which... more The most intensive period of language development is during the first years of life, during which the brain is developing rapidly. Research has shown that children from disadvantaged households who received high-quality stimulation at a young age grew into adults who earned an average of 25% more than those who did not receive these interventions. In addition, it has been suggested that children who show a greater interest in literacy-related activities and voluntarily engage in them are likely to become better readers than children with less interest in literacy. These children’s factors, along with their engagement in literacy activities, are important components in children’s early literacy experiences and may affect their early language development. In this study, we examined associations among maternal education, home literacy environment (HLE), children’s interest and engagement in literacy activities, and language development of 44 toddlers aged between 20 and 36 months. Over...
The Simple View of Reading (SVR) model was investigated in Italian beginner readers to address th... more The Simple View of Reading (SVR) model was investigated in Italian beginner readers to address the following research questions: (a) does listening comprehension play a stronger role in reading comprehension than reading accuracy and fluency in the initial stages of literacy?; (b) what is the role of vocabulary within the SVR framework? First graders (N = 149; mean age = 6;3) were assessed at the beginning (T1; no formal instruction) and end (T2; after 6 months) of the school year. Vocabulary breadth and depth, and non-verbal reasoning were assessed at T1. Reading and listening comprehension, accuracy and fluency for non-words and words were assessed at T2. Structural equation models showed that (a) listening comprehension had a stronger relation with reading comprehension than reading accuracy and fluency at T2; (b) vocabulary breadth and depth at T1 accounted for reading comprehension through listening comprehension at T2. Findings supported the relevance of listening comprehensio...
Listening narrative comprehension, according to the theoretical framework of the multicomponent m... more Listening narrative comprehension, according to the theoretical framework of the multicomponent model for comprehension, involves numerous skills that interact dynamically between each other and have the potential to give rise to individual differences in comprehension. The purpose of the current work was to define a comprehensive and complete multicomponent model of listening narrative comprehension in preschool age. We investigated how variation in Length of Exposure to majority Language (i.e., how long children have been exposed to the Italian language), lower-order cognitive (WM, inhibitory control, attention shifting), language skills (receptive vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, rapid naming), and higher-order cognitive skills (inferences, TOM, knowledge of story-structure) are related to listening narrative comprehension in Italian of 111 preschool children (Mage = 61 months; SD = 6.8) growing in a monolingual or multilingual context. Structural equation modeling results showed...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Bilingual exposure (BE) and socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with children’s development... more Bilingual exposure (BE) and socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with children’s development, but their specific and unique effects are still unclear. This study analyzed the influence of these environmental factors on a set of cognitive and linguistic abilities in preschoolers to disentangle their effects. One hundred-eleven Italian-speaking preschool children (mean age = 61 months; SD = 6.8) growing in a monolingual or multilingual context completed an assessment of cognitive (theory of mind, inhibition, attention shifting and working memory) and linguistic abilities (vocabulary, grammar, narrative comprehension, lexical access). The results of hierarchical regressions with predictors variation in BE (both Length and Daily exposure) and SES on each ability, shown a specific contribution of variation in SES, after controlling for BE, in vocabulary, grammar, and working memory (WM), and a specific contribution of variation in BE, over and above effect of SES, in vocabulary, nar...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Socioeconomic disparities increase the probability that children will enter school behind their m... more Socioeconomic disparities increase the probability that children will enter school behind their more advantaged peers. Early intervention on language skills may enhance language and literacy outcomes, reduce the gap and, eventually, promote school readiness of low-SES (Socioeconomic Status) children. This study aimed to analyze the feasibility and effectiveness of a brief narrative-based intervention (treatment vs. control group) aimed to foster broad oral language skills in preschoolers (N = 69; Mean age = 5.5, SD = 4 months) coming from low-SES families. Moreover, it was analyzed whether children’s initial vocabulary mediates the intervention’s responsiveness. Results have shown that children in treatment group obtained greater gains than children in control group in almost all intervention-based measures. There is also some evidence for the generalizability of the intervention to other skills not directly trained during the intervention. Moreover, it was found that children’s ini...
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